Regularity for subelliptic PDE through uniform estimates in multi-scale geometries (Q300784)

In this paper the authors review and extend some recent results about stability of certain geometric and analytic estimates in the Riemannian approximation of sub-Riemannian structures. As it is well known, the study of subelliptic operators is very closely related to some geometric and analytic properties like the doubling property for metric balls, the Poincaré inequality, the Gaussian estimates and the parabolic Harnack inequality. These properties are connected in the sense that the doubling and Poincaré properties are equivalent to the Gaussian estimates and also to the parabolic Harnack inequality. A sub-Riemannian structure can assigned with a choice of vector fields \((X_i)_{i=1, \ldots, m}\) with a metric \(g_0\) which makes them orthonormal, and satisfying the Hörmander condition. The given family of vector fields can be completed to a basis with new vector fields \((X_i)_{i=m+1, \ldots, n}\), and an approximating Riemannian metric \(g_\epsilon\) can be obtained requiring that the following vector fields are orthonormal: \((X_i^\epsilon)_{i=1, \ldots, n} = (X_i)_{i=1, \ldots, m}, \epsilon (X_i)_{i=m+1, \ldots, n}\). One of the results of this paper is to study the behavior of the balls along a sequence of metrics \(g_\epsilon\) as \(\epsilon \to 0\) when the Riemannian structures collapse to a sub-Riemannian one. They prove that the doubling estimates are stable as \(\epsilon \to 0\) and hold also in the limiting case \(\epsilon = 0\), using a technique inspired by Nagel Stein Wainger. As a consequence they obtain a Poincaré inequality stable as \(\epsilon \to 0\), with an argument inspired by Lanconelli and Morbidelli. Another result concerns the stability of the Gaussian estimates for the heat kernels associated to the family of second order subelliptic differential equations in non variational form \[ L_{\epsilon,A} u \equiv \partial_t u - \sum_{i,j=1}^p a_{ij}^\epsilon X_i^\epsilon X_j^\epsilon u =0 \] in a cilinder \(\Omega\times (0, T)\) and \({a_{ij}}\) a real matrix whose ellipticity is uniform both in \((x, t)\) and \(\epsilon\). In particular, they extend to case of Hörmander vector fields (see Theorem 1.3) estimates on the fundamental solution that have been proved by Citti and Manfredini in the subelliptic setting (see [\textit{G. Citti} and \textit{M. Manfredini}, Potential Anal. 25, No. 2, 147--164 (2006; Zbl 1112.35047)]) and by the same authors together with Capogna for parabolic operators in Carnot spaces (see [\textit{L. Capogna} et al., Anal. Geom. Metr. Spaces 1, 255--275 (2013; Zbl 1275.53055)]). Another family of results in the paper is the extension of the Schauder estimates established in ref. [loc. cit.] to the Hörmander vector fields setting for operators in non divergence form (see Theorem 1.4) and a stable version of analogous estimates in the \(L^p\) spaces which is valid for Hörmander vector fields (see Theorem 1.5). These results are applied to the parabolic Harnack inequalities that hold uniformly at all scales and, by using the Schauder estimates, they are able to obtain smoothness of solutions for the limiting case \(\epsilon = 0\). To end the paper the authors show that the structural stability, the stability of the Schauder estimates and the Harnack estimates allow them to prove regularity and long time existence for solutions of the sub-Riemannian curvature flow and the total curvature flow of graphs over bounded sets in step 2 Carnot groups and in some Lie groups.